


Three in the Morning

by greenapricot



Category: Endeavour (TV)
Genre: Episode: s04e02 Canticle, M/M, Oral Sex, allusions to breathplay
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-07
Updated: 2018-11-07
Packaged: 2019-08-19 19:10:32
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,531
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16540442
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/greenapricot/pseuds/greenapricot
Summary: It’s Morse on his doorstep. Of course, it’s Morse. It wouldn’t be anyone else, banging on his front door in the middle of the night, rousing him out of a sound sleep with an almighty clatter.





	Three in the Morning

**Author's Note:**

  * For [iloveyoudie](https://archiveofourown.org/users/iloveyoudie/gifts).



> Takes place a few hours after the end of Canticle.
> 
> Written for a tumblr prompt meme for Ange who asked for: “It’s three in the morning.” - you know I'm gonna ask for Morse and Max. Or just Max. Something with Max. 
> 
> As is usual with prompts for me, it turned into a proper fic (and took so long I can no longer remember what the meme was about).

It’s Morse on his doorstep. Of course, it’s Morse. It wouldn’t be anyone else, banging on his front door in the middle of the night, rousing him out of a sound sleep with an almighty clatter.

“It’s three in the morning,” Max snaps, wrenching the door open with not a little bit of pique. Morse startles as if Max’s appearance is a complete surprise, as if he hadn’t been banging on the door with his fist moments earlier. He doesn’t appear to have been stabbed or beaten or be more than the usual into his cups, but there is a bit of a deer-in-the-headlights look about him.

Morse says nothing, takes a step forward and stumbles over his own feet. Ah yes, the unfortunate cocktail of hexing herbs. The prognosis Max had wheedled out of a colleague up on the wards had been full recovery, no lasting effects, but that on top of Morse’s propensity for too much drink and not enough sleep isn’t a recipe for anything good. Max reaches out a hand before his better judgment can intervene, preventing Morse from knocking his head into the doorjamb. 

“Max,” Morse says finally, eyes fixed on Max’s hand where it rests on the doorjamb, his tone reflecting the same level of surprise the door opening had elicited. 

“This _is_ my house,” Max replies. Morse nods but seems disinclined to move any further than the stoop. “Thought you’d wake me so I knew you were planning to spend the night on my doorstep, did you?”

Morse blinks at him, hope, regret, and something darker passing across his face.

“Come in, then, if you’re coming,” Max says with a sigh, ushering Morse through the door and into the entry hall with a steadying hand between his shoulder blades, before shutting the door behind them. 

Once he’s through the door, Morse leans heavily against the wall, tipping his head back as if the effort of standing upright in the street has sapped the last of his energy. He’s wearing only a shirt, no jacket or tie, sleeves rolled up and the top buttons undone, exposing the fine bones of his clavicle and the collar of his vest to the dim entryway light. He has the look of someone who walked out of his flat not intending to go far, yet here his is on the other side of town. Max does his best not to think about the last time he saw Morse in this state of undress and what they were doing at the time. 

The weather isn’t anything he would call cold, but there’s enough dampness in the air that Morse must have been chilly on the walk over. Max restrains himself from laying a hand on Morse’s forearm to see how chilled his skin is. One of their many unspoken rules is that Morse always makes the first move. 

It’s always awkward, these first few minutes before Morse sheds his prickliness and they get down to the business of why he’s really come here. Before Morse, drunk and pliant, gets handsy as Max manoeuvres him up the stairs and into the spare bedroom. Max has always chalked those wandering hands up to Morse’s propensity for chasing after every pretty face that happens by—not that he’d include himself in that category by any stretch of the imagination. It only ever happens when Morse is drunk enough for Max to wonder how the chap even made it out to his house. Drunk enough that Morse stumbles up every other step and leans heavily on Max as they negotiate the landing and hallway. He’s not so obviously intoxicated this time, but he’s not sober either, leaning on Max more, it seems, because he wants the physical contact than needs it to remain upright. 

Once he’s got Morse into the spare room Max disengages and points him toward the bed, then goes to fetch a glass of water and some paracetamol. It’s all part of the dance; they both pretend that Morse is here for Max’s skills as a doctor, regardless of the lack of any physical injury, until Morse reaches for him. 

When he returns Morse is sitting on the edge of the bed in the dark looking for all the world like he has no idea what to do next. Max sighs, puts the glass and the pills on the table by the bed and switches on the lamp. The dilation of Morse’s pupils is normal for the amount of light in the room. He’s likely no longer feeling the physical effects of the drugs, the mental ones, however… and then there’s the whisky on his breath. 

“They didn’t warn you off drinking after all that?”

Morse looks at him properly for the first time since Max opened his front door, he looks tired more than anything else, defeated. “Whisky’s hardly a hallucinogen. They gave me a clean bill of health.”

Max hums his disapproval. “Notwithstanding that, you ought to take it easy for a couple of days, at least. Get some proper rest.”

Morse shrugs, uncharacteristically quiet, and gazes past Max out the open bedroom door. Perhaps Morse isn’t here for the usual reason tonight, perhaps he simply doesn’t want to sleep in his own bed.

“Sleeping in your shirt and shoes are you?”

Morse’s gaze snaps back to Max and he sits abruptly upright, his eyes losing some of their glassiness as if he’s come to a sudden conclusion. He begins to unbutton his shirt further, pulling his arm out before he’s got all the buttons undone and getting his hand stuck in the still buttoned cuff. Max steps forward to help, undoing the cuff button and tugging the shirt down his arm, then Morse is leaning forward, pressing his face to Max’s stomach and encircling Max’s waist with the arm that’s free of his shirt. 

“I want to feel you,” Morse says. “Now. Here. Not— Not anything that was…” Not whatever he saw in his head while in the throes of the drug if Max were to hazard a guess. Does Morse know that Max checked up on him? Unlikely. Max is nothing if not discrete. Morse presses in closer, freeing his other arm from his shirt and bringing his hand to rest on Max’s backside. “Tell me you don’t like that,” Morse says, his words muffled against Max’s pyjama shirt. Max can’t, God help, him he can’t. 

Morse must take Max’s silence as acquiescence. He slides forward and down until he’s kneeling on the floor between Max and the bed, pressing his face to Max’s groin and breathing hot air through the fabric of his pyjamas. Max almost loses his footing. 

“Morse,” Max gasps. He ought to put a stop to this, make more of an effort to determine how much whisky Morse has had on top of any lingering effects of the drugs, but Max can’t seem to form the words with Morse’s mouth tracing the outline of his cock through his pyjamas. Morse hums against him, both hands at the waistband of Max’s pyjama bottoms, pulling them over his hips. Max isn’t wearing pants and his already half-hard cock twitches as it’s exposed to the chill air. Morse glances up at Max, licks his lips, and closes his mouth over the head.

“ _Christ_.” Max grabs onto Morse’s shoulder, barely managing to keep upright. Morse steadies him with a hand on his bare arse, giving it a good squeeze in counterpoint to taking all of Max’s rapidly hardening cock into his mouth at once; hot, slick, literally breathtaking. Words desert him completely as Morse encircles the base of his cock with one hand, hollows his cheeks and sucks, settling into a steady, mind-numbing rhythm that drives all thought completely out of Max’s head. He can focus on nothing but Morse’s wonderfully talented mouth, Morse moaning around his cock, his other hand stroking over Max’s backside. He can’t keep himself from grabbing a handful of Morse’s curls to hold him steady, and Morse moans louder, sending vibrations along the length of Max’s cock. _Christ. He likes that._

Max gives Morse’s hair another tug and his motion stutters, he lets out a sound that’s halfway between a growl and a moan, his eyes fluttering open, pulling off of Max’s cock for a moment and holding his gaze. Everything about Morse’s expression says yes; the flush on his cheeks, his eyes dark with lust, the way licks his lips, his fingers twitching around Max’s cock in eagerness to continue. Then he redoubles his efforts, swirling his tongue around the head, licking down the length of him and back up again before engulfing him in slick heat once more, taking him in even deeper than before. It’s all too much, it’s just right, and Max is spilling into Morse’s mouth before he can even manage a warning, bracing himself with his arm on the bed over Morse’ shoulder, his moans filling the small room.

When he comes back to himself, leaning heavily on the bed and Morse, Max becomes aware of motion beneath him. Morse is still crouched on the floor, one hand moving quickly over his own cock. Max touches his cheek and Morse looks up, meets Max’s eyes, lets out a stifled gasp of a moan and collapses back against the side of the bed, spilling across his hand and his vest. Max’s legs are still too rubbery to do anything but slide down the side of the bed to the floor next to him. He pulls his pyjama trousers up, trying to regain some sense of dignity he’s not sure is salvageable and turns toward Morse.

Morse’s breath is still coming in shallow gasps, his face flushed, lips glistening. Leaning there against the bed, still wearing his rumpled vest, legs spread wide, trousers open to reveal his softening cock, he looks not at all embarrassed or concerned about the state he’s in. He looks relaxed, sated, beautiful; the usual tight line of his shoulders slackened. Morse wipes his hand across his mouth, lets out a long sigh and tilts his head back against the bed. It’s all Max can do not to lean over and kiss his exposed throat. Morse turns his head and gives Max a bashful half smile, then gazes out the still open door.

“In the morgue,” Morse says, “during the Finch case…” He brings his hand to his neck, trailing his fingers along his jaw and then down across his throat, rubbing along his Adam’s apple with his first two fingers. Then he crooks his fingers downward as if he’s tugging at something, his look gone wistful. It takes Max a moment to switch gears from Morse leaning languid and post-coital against his spare bed to Morse apparently ready to talk about work. “Could we— Sometime— Maybe with—” He slides his fingers across his throat again. Oh. _Oh_. The little demonstration Max had given with the rope, the way Morse had reached back for Max’s hands when he first placed the rope over Morse’s head, not immediately trying to tug it off his throat. This is a new and intriguing direction for their… whatever this is. 

Max swallows, this is the first time Morse has ever asked for anything with words, anything beyond cupping Max’s cock through his trousers and shooting him a lustful look that Max is always helpless to resist, before getting his hands on him and getting him off as quickly as possible. It’s the first time he’s ever acknowledged what they’ve been doing together when they aren’t actively engaged in the activity itself. Usually, it’s nothing but a quick fumble to mutual satisfaction before Morse passes out on the spare bed and Max retires to his own, not keen to discover how little sleep he’s likely to get squeezed into the single bed with Morse. Not sure Morse is keen to share a bed at all, he’s never made any indication that he would be.

It is not what Max would call an ideal relationship, if it can even be called a relationship, but it’s more than he’d ever thought possible the first time he laid eyes on Morse lurking at the edge of his crime scene, trying to both look and not look at a body. It’s as much as someone like him is likely to ever get.

“If you like,” Max says, doing his best to sound amenable and not overly eager.

Morse nods and lets out another long sigh, the ghost of a smile teasing the corners of his mouth, and leans more heavily against the bed.

It’s a delicate balance, one Max is never quite sure he’s got the measure of; what will push Morse into prickly silence or tip him over into pliant relaxation. There doesn’t seem to be any outward indication of which way it will go at any given moment, it’s all down to Morse’s whim; the intricate and intriguing workings of that great mind of his. But after Morse’s admission, Max takes the risk and reaches out his hand, brushing his fingers across Morse’s throat and up the side of his neck under his jaw. Morse sighs and leans into the touch, turning his head toward Max and meeting his eyes, then looks down at Max’s lips and licks his own. Max leans forward and Morse meets him eagerly. 

A groan of pleasure escapes Max at the bitter tang of his own spunk on Morse’s tongue, and he tangles his hands in Morse’s hair again, pulling him closer. Morse moans and lets himself be pulled; gets ahold of Max’s pyjama shirt collar and slides to the floor, tugging Max down on top of him, until Max is sprawled across him, the kiss turning languid as if Morse is prepared to do this all night. Max would be as well if it weren’t for the fact that neither the floor nor the bony man beneath him are particularly soft. 

“How about we take this somewhere more comfortable?” Max asks, cringing inwardly at how much it sounds like a bad pick up line as he starts to sit up. Morse doesn’t seem to notice, shifting the focus of his kisses from Max’s lips to his neck, undoing the buttons on Max’s pyjama shirt, kissing down across his clavicle to his chest. 

It is another risk, inviting Morse into his bed, much more intimate than snatched moments of mutual pleasure in the spare room. It may well be more than Morse is willing to concede, but tonight feels different to all the nights previous. Morse is less frenetic, more relaxed, like being with Max might be something he’s willing to acknowledge, something he actually wants, more than just an occasional late night pressure release. 

“If you like,” Morse says with a crooked grin, echoing Max’s earlier response. 

Max stands and offers his hand, pulling Morse to his feet. Once they’re both standing, Morse leans in and presses a kiss to the corner of Max’s mouth, then takes a step back, studying him. He looks both apprehensive and resolved. Max can work with that. He doesn’t release Morse’s hand when he turns toward the door. 

_____


End file.
